Expository Thoughts (continued)
This wretched waiting for something which we have not, and neglect of what we already have, is the ruin of thousands of souls.
Faith, simple faith in the Scriptures which we already possess, is the first thing needful to salvation. The man who has the Bible, and can read it, and yet waits for more evidence before he becomes a decided
Christian, is deceiving himself. Except he awakens from his delusion he will die in his sins.
Notes on 16:19-31
19. I believe the parable was specially intended by our Lord for the benefit of the Pharisees, to whom he was speaking when he delivered it. I believe that our Lord's main aim was to rebuke the selfishness, worldliness, lack of charity, and general forgetfulness of responsibilities of which the Pharisees were guilty and to expose the fearful end to which their unbelief and neglect of their own
Scriptures were rapidly bringing them.
"Dressed in purple." Purple was a particularly rich and expensive dye, and clothes dyed with it were only worn by the rich and noble.
Lydia was a "dealer in purple cloth" (Acts 16:14).
21. "The dogs came and licked his sores." Some have thought that this increased Lazarus' misery, and the dogs made his suffering worse. I cannot see this. To me it implies that the dogs cared for Lazarus more than men did. It was an act of kindness.
22. "To Abraham's side" (KJV: "bosom"). This is most probably a proverbial expression. It signifies the place of rest and safety to which all believing Jews were carried after death. Abraham was the father of the faithful and the head of the whole Jewish family, and to be with him after death implied happiness. See Matthew 8:11.
23. "In hell, where he was in torment." In interpreting this and several of the following verses, we must take care to remember that we are reading a parabolic narrative.
26. "'A great chasm has been fixed.'" This verse clearly teaches, if words mean anything, that there is no hope of deliverance from hell for those who die in sin. Once in hell, men are in hell forever. The doctrines of purgatory or of a limited duration of punishment cannot be reconciled with this text.
31. "'If someone rises from the dead.'" Let the striking fact be noted that another man called Lazarus did rise from the dead, and yet the Jews stayed unbelieving. Above all, remember that Christ himself rose from the dead, and yet the Jewish nation would not believe.
Luke – Chap. 17
LUKE 17:1-4
STUMBLING BLOCKS
We are taught for one thing in these verses, the great sinfulness of putting stumbling-blocks in the way of other men's souls. The Lord Jesus says, "Woe unto him through whom offences come! It were better for him that a mill-stone were hung about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones."
When do men make others stumble? When do they cause "offences" to come? They do it, beyond doubt, whenever they persecute believers, or endeavor to deter them from serving Christ.
But this, unhappily, is not all. Professing Christians do it whenever they bring discredit on their religion by inconsistencies of temper, of word, or of deed. We do it whenever we make our Christianity unlovely in the eyes of the world, by conduct not in keeping with our profession. The world may not understand the doctrines and principles of believers. But the world is very keen-sighted about their practice.
The sin against which our Lord warns us was the sin of David.
When he had broken the seventh commandment, and taken the wife of Uriah to be his wife, the prophet Nathan said to him, "You have given great occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme." (2
Sam. 12:14.) It was the sin which Paul charges on the Jews, when he says, "the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you." (Rom. 2:24.) It is the sin of which he frequently entreats
Christians to beware— "Give no offence, neither to the Jews nor to the Gentiles, nor to the Church of God." (1 Cor. 10:32.)
The subject is a deeply searching one. The sin which our Lord brings before us is unhappily very common. The inconsistencies of professing Christians too often supply the men of the world with an excuse for neglecting religion altogether. An inconsistent believer, whether he knows it or not, is daily doing harm to souls. His life is a positive injury to the Gospel of Christ.
Let us often ask ourselves whether we are doing good or harm in the world. We cannot live to ourselves, if we are Christians. The eyes of many will always be upon us. Men will judge by what they see, far more than by what they hear. If they see the Christian contradicting by his practice what he professes to believe, they are justly stumbled and offended. For the world's sake, as well as for our own, let us labor to be eminently holy. Let us endeavor to make our religion beautiful in the eyes of men, and to adorn the doctrine of Christ in all things. Let us strive daily to lay aside every weight, and the sin which most easily besets us, and so to live that men can find no fault in us, except concerning the law of our God. Let us watch jealously over our tempers and tongues, and the discharge of our social duties.
Anything is better than doing harm to souls. The cross of Christ will always give offence. Let us not increase that offence by carelessness in our daily life. The natural man cannot be expected to love the Gospel. But let us not disgust him by inconsistency.
We are taught, for another thing, in these verses, the great importance of a forgiving spirit. The Lord Jesus says, "if your brother sins against you, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him— and if he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times in a day turn again to you, saying, I repent, forgive him."
There are few Christian duties which are so frequently and strongly dwelt upon in the New Testament as this of 'forgiving injuries'. It fills a prominent place in the Lord's prayer. The only profession we make in all that prayer, is that of forgiving "those who trespass against us." It is a test of being forgiven ourselves. The man who cannot forgive his neighbor the few trifling offences he may have committed against him, can know nothing experimentally of that free and full pardon which is offered no by Christ. (Matt. 18:35; Ephes.
4:32.)
Not least, it is one leading mark of the indwelling of the Holy
Spirit. The presence of the Spirit in the heart may always be known by the fruits He causes to be brought forth in the life. Those fruits are both active and passive. The man who has not learned to bear and forbear, to put up with much and look over much, is not born of the Spirit. (1 John 3:14; Matt. 5:44, 45.)
The doctrine laid down by our Lord in this place is deeply humbling. It shows most plainly the wide contrariety which exists between the ways of the world and the Gospel of Christ. Who does not know that pride, and arrogance, and high-mindedness, and readiness to take offence, and implacable determination never to forget and never to forgive, are common among baptized men and women? Thousands will go to the Lord's table, and even profess to love the Gospel, who fire up in a moment at the least appearance of what they call "offensive" conduct, and make a quarrel out of the merest trifles. Thousands are perpetually quarreling with all around them, always complaining how ill other people behave, and always forgetting that their own quarrelsome disposition is the spark which causes the flame.